OPENING
Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc (R) This anime film has its protagonist (voiced by Kikunosuke Toya in the Japanese version and Ryan Colt Levy in the English-dubbed one) falling in love with a cafe worker (voiced by Reina Ueda). Additional voices by Tomori Kusunoki, Shôgo Sakata, Ai Farouz, and Natsuki Hanae. (Opens Friday)
Chaniya Toli (NR) This Gujarati-language comedy stars Yash Soni as a con artist who aims to scam a village out of its funds. Also with Netri Trivedi, Heena Varde, Maulik Nayak, Chetan Daiya, and Jay Bhatt. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Dream Eater (NR) Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams write, direct, and star in this found-footage horror film about a filmmaker documenting her boyfriend’s violent behavior in his sleep. Also with Kelly Williams, Dainty Smith, David Richard, and Robin Akimbo. (Opens Friday)
Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat (NR) Sonam Bajwa stars in this Indian thriller as a woman whose romance with a prominent politician (Harshvardhan Rane) turns deadly. Also with Shaad Randhawa, Sachin Khedekar, Rajesh Khera, and Ananth Narayan Mahadevan. (Opens Friday)
Godday Godday Chaa 2 (NR) This Indian comedy takes place in a Punjabi village where the women take control of wedding preparations from the men. Starring Amrit Amby, Gurpreet Bhangu, Gitaj Bindrakhia, Nikeet Dhillon, Seema Kaushal, and Nirmal Rishi. (Opens Friday at Cinemark North East Mall)
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (R) Rose Byrne stars in this drama as a mother dealing with mental illness while trying to care for her seriously ill daughter (Delaney Quinn). Also with Mary Bronstein, A$AP Rocky, Ivy Wolk, Danielle Macdonald, Daniel Zolghadri, Josh Pais, Mark Stolzenberg, Conan O’Brien, and Christian Slater. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Last Days (PG-13) Based on the documentary by the same name, Justin Lin’s drama stars Sky Yang as a 26-year-old Christian missionary who undertakes a deadly mission to convert the unreached people of North Sentinel Island. Also with Ken Leung, Radhika Apte, Claire Price, Ali Fardi, Olamide Candide-Johnson, and Naveen Andrews. (Opens Friday at Cinemark Tinseltown Grapevine)
The Librarians (NR) Kim A. Snyder’s documentary profiles librarians in Texas and Florida trying to prevent government censorship of books. (Opens Friday in Dallas)
Luv Ya Bum! (NR) This documentary narrated by Dennis Quaid chronicles Bum Phillips and the Houston Oilers of the 1980s. Also with Peyton Manning, Terry Bradshaw, Earl Campbell, Archie Manning, Wade Phillips, Dan Pastorini, Sean McVay, J.J. Watt, and Jerry Jones. (Opens Friday at AMC Grapevine Mills)
Queens of the Dead (NR) Tina Romero’s horror-comedy is about a group of drag queens battling a zombie outbreak. Starring Katy O’Brian, Jack Haven, Jaquel Spivey, Cheyenne Jackson, Tom Savini, Quincy Dunn-Baker, Eve Lindley, Riki Lindhome, and Margaret Cho. (Opens Friday)
Regretting You (PG-13) Grapevine’s own McKenna Grace is the only reason to watch this weeper based on Colleen Hoover’s novel. She portrays a high-school theater kid in North Carolina whose father (Scott Eastwood) and mother’s sister (Willa Fitzgerald) are killed in the same car accident, and her mother (Allison Williams) tries to keep the knowledge from her that the two were having an affair. The dramatic messiness of this situation gets sanded over at every turn by director Josh Boone and by the decorating-magazine interiors that it all plays out in. The only thing that keeps this from inducing sleep is the spiky turn by Grace as a girl who’s looking at colleges while finding first love with a movie nerd (Mason Thames) in her class. Her performance does North Texas proud. Also with Dave Franco, Sam Morelos, Ethan Costanilla, and Clancy Brown. (Opens Friday)
Shelby Oaks (R) Film critic Chris Stuckmann’s first feature film is this horror movie about a woman (Camille Sullivan) who finds evidence that her long-missing sister (Sarah Durn) may be alive. Also with C.L. Simpson, Caisey Cole, Sloane Harlow Burkett, Brenna Sherman, Eric Francis Melaragni, and Lauren Ashley Berry. (Opens Friday)
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (PG-13) Depression sure is dull in this biopic about one of America’s great musicians. Jeremy Allen White looks dead on as the young Boss and does an acceptable job of singing Bruce Springsteen’s songs, but can’t force any life into this rote film that covers the rock legend’s life in the early 1980s, when he’s already famous but not yet the megastar that he would become. Writer-director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) goes through Springsteen’s family history of mental troubles and his relationship with a diner waitress from Jersey (Odessa Young), but the movie yields less insight into the musician’s body of work than Blinded by the Light or High Fidelity. Unlike Springsteen’s songs, this fails to take you anywhere transcendent, or even interesting. Also with Jeremy Strong, Stephen Graham, Gaby Hoffman, Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz, Matthew Pellicano Jr., Grace Gummer, and Marc Maron. (Opens Friday)
Thamma (NR) Ayushmann Khurrana and Rashmika Mandanna star in this Indian horror-comedy about a journalist who finds a story in a nearby village after he’s stranded in the jungle. Also with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Paresh Rawal, Geeta Agarwal Sharma, Faisal Malik, Alexx O’Neill, Nora Fatehi, Abhishek Banerjee, and Varun Dhawan. (Opens Friday)
NOW PLAYING
After the Hunt (R) Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo drama has a lot of star power and not much to say. Julia Roberts stars as a Yale philosophy professor who’s caught in the middle when her prize Ph.D. student (Ayo Edebiri) accuses a popular professor (Andrew Garfield) of rape. Watching this movie is like trying to hit a golf ball-sized piñata while blindfolded and facing the wrong direction. Screenwriter Nora Garrett gins up the suspense by withholding key information, and the payoff is too small when she does reveal the secrets that the characters are keeping. The complexity here is too much for the filmmakers to handle, and the resolution isn’t earned. This movie’s grander ambitions and hot-button issues wind up defeating it. Also with Michael Stuhlbarg, David Leiber, Thaddea Graham, Will Price, and Chloë Sevigny.
The Bad Guys 2 (PG) Better than the first movie, actually. The gang (voiced by Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos, Marc Maron, and Craig Robinson) has trouble landing jobs after getting out of prison, so a rival gang frames them for their own crimes and forces them to commit additional crimes to clear their names. The climactic sequence is a bit drawn out, but until then the movie has a nice time mocking tech billionaires who want to go into space and the tropes of heist movies, as well as a nice interlude at a lucha libre wrestling event. Mark this down as an above-average animated kids’ film. Additional voices by Danielle Brooks, Maria Bakalova, Zazie Beetz, Jaime Camil, Richard Ayoade, Lilly Singh, Alex Borstein, Omid Djalili, and Natasha Lyonne.
Black Phone 2 (R) Deeply confused. Mason Thames reprises his role from the 2021 original as the now-traumatized teenager who has visions of the pedophile serial killer (Ethan Hawke) whom he killed, and whose younger sister (Madeleine McGraw) is now having visions of kids murdered decades before at a Christian youth camp in the Rockies. Set in 1983 as the siblings arrive at the snowed-in camp, the movie purposefully echoes The Shining, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street and also tries to throw in some Christian theology for good measure. It all fails because the underlying horror plot moves so sluggishly and without regard for internal logic. I’m not even sure what this series is supposed to be anymore. Also with Jeremy Davies, Miguel Mora, Arianna Rivas, James Ransone, Anna Lore, and Demián Bichir.
The Conjuring: Last Rites (R) Ed and Lorraine Warren finally retire, and it’s at least two movies too late. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga take their last turn as the paranormal investigating couple, looking into a haunted mirror in Pennsylvania. Or at least that’s what’s supposed to happen, but our investigators take forever to actually get to the site. The movie wastes so much time on their backstory, as well as their adult daughter (Mia Tomlinson) getting married and having her own psychic visions. That doesn’t work, and neither does the scary stuff. Also with Orion Smith, Madison Lawlor, Ben Hardy, Steve Coulter, Beau Gadsdon, Kila Lord Cassidy, Elliot Cowan, Rebecca Calder, Peter Wight, Madison Wolfe, Frances O’Connor, Mackenzie Foy, Lili Taylor, and an uncredited James Wan.
Demon Slayer — Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Infinity Castle (R) The latest installment of the anime saga has a new look and the same issues. The demon Muzan Kibutsuji (voiced by Toshihiko Seki and Greg Chun) lures the demon slayers into his castle, an impressive looking, Christopher Nolan-influenced fortress where floors and walls are constantly shifting and the crevices between dimensions peek through. This would be a great backdrop for a thriller with horror elements, but as with too many of these adventures, the fight sequences are interrupted by gauzy and overly lengthy flashbacks. Anime fans will be used to this, but this squanders a chance to rope in newcomers to the epic. Additional voices by Natsuki Hanae, Zach Aguilar, Akari Kitō, Abby Trott, Hiro Shimono, Aleks Le, Yoshitugu Matsuoka, Bryce Papenbrook, Reina Ueda, Brianna Knickerbocker, Yuichi Nakamura, and Channing Tatum.
Dude (NR) Pradeep Ranganathan stars in this Tamil-language romantic action-comedy. Also with Mamitha Baiju, Neha Shetty, R. Sarathkumar, Hridhu Haroon, and Rohini.
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie (G) Strictly for fans of the kids’ TV show, I’m afraid. Laila Lockhart Kraner reprises her starring role as a girl whose dollhouse full of cat dolls is stolen by a crazed collector (Kristen Wiig). Despite the celebrities doing the voices of the cat dolls, the separation of them doesn’t lead to interesting subplots, and the songs sung by the cast are less than inspired. All the sparkly stuff on the screen will entertain small children, but even the star seems like she’s outgrown this material. Also with Gloria Estefan. Additional voices by Kyle Mooney, Melissa Villaseñor, Ego Nwodim, Thomas Lennon, Fortune Feimster, and Jason Mantzoukas.
Good Boy (PG) A most unusual horror film that’s told from the dog’s point of view. A Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever named Indy portrays a similarly named dog who moves to a remote cabin with his master (Shane Jensen), who is dying of cancer. At its worst, this movie provides a proof of concept that such a premise is viable. At its best, the movie provides scares beyond what Hollywood can do. Director Ben Leonberg (who is Indy’s owner in real life) provides atmosphere with the cabin lit by lamps powered by electric generator, and the monster haunting Indy is good for some scares. The story, too, is about a pet’s fears stemming from the impending loss of his human. It’s a rare movie from a dog’s POV that follows you home afterward. Also with Arielle Friedman, Stuart Rudin, and Larry Fessenden.
Good Fortune (R) Aziz Ansari’s directing debut shows some flashes of promise before falling apart near the end. The standup comic stars as a downtrodden service worker who’s visited by a bumbling guardian angel (Keanu Reeves). The angel then allows him to experience the life of the venture capitalist (Seth Rogen) who recently fired him, except that our guy likes being rich so much that he doesn’t want to go back. The comedy is put together pretty well and offers some trenchant comments on the gig economy, and the lead actors are all on their game. Unfortunately, the film stumbles when it tries to find purpose in the lives of the minimum-wage earners. Ansari has the talent to keep at this, he just needs to give a bit more thought to his material. Also with Keke Palmer, Felipe Garcia Martinez, Matt Rogers, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Sandra Oh. (Opens Friday)
Him (R) This unlikely hybrid of football drama and horror film stars Tyriq Withers as a highly touted prospect just out of college who receives an invitation to work out at a remote desert compound with his football idol (Marlon Wayans). The younger man soon starts noticing that his mentor is resorting to weird practices to extend his own playing career. The movie starts out well as an anti-football satire, and Wayans’ comedy experience serves him well as a villain who keeps his charge off balance. Unfortunately, director/co-writer Justin Tipping (Kicks) loses control of his signifiers well before the contract-signing ceremony that includes human sacrifices. This movie is overheated and undercooked. Also with Julia Fox, Jim Jefferies, Maurice Greene, Don Benjamin, Guapdad 4000, Naomi Grossman, Tierra Whack, and Tim Heidecker.
Kantara: Chapter 1 (NR) Confusingly, this is a sequel to the 2022 Indian film, with Rishab Shetty playing a different role in a story about pre-colonial tribes rising up against a tyrant (Jayaram). Also with Rukmini Vasanth, Gulshan Devaiah, Pramod Shetty, Rakesh Poojari, and Prakash Thuminad.
K-Ramp (NR) A trainwreck. Kiran Abbavaram stars in this Telugu-language comedy as a rich layabout student in Kerala who falls in love with a more industrious colleague (Yukti Thareja), only to discover that she has serious mental problems after he misses a date with her and she tries to kill herself. The lead actress’ performance is overdone in favor of giving Abbavaram more business to play, and the movie’s treatment of mental illness for laughs will leave a sour taste in your mouth. Also with Sai Kumar. Muralidhar Goud, Naresh, and Vennela Kishore.
Light of the World (PG) This animated film tells the story of Jesus (voiced by Ian Hanlin) from the viewpoint of John (voiced by Benjamin Jacobson). Additional voices by David Kaye, Jesse Inocalla, Sam Darkoh, Ceara Morgana, Dylan Leonard, Mark Oliver, and Vincent Tong.
The Long Walk (R) Stephen King’s ageless wonder of a novel becomes a powerfully tragic film. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson play two young men in a dystopian future America who enter a contest where 50 males walk along a predetermined highway route and are executed when they can walk no more, with the last kid walking receiving a fortune. The most Hunger Games-ian of King’s books is adapted by Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence, who follows the author’s relentless focus on what a forced march like this does to the human body. Amid a landscape of cruelty inflicted on young men, the friendship that forms between the two main characters (who still know that one of them is destined to wind up dead) shines like a beacon of humanity. Their performances turn this into nothing less than this generation’s The Shawshank Redemption. Also with Judy Greer, Ben Wang, Charlie Plummer, Tut Nyuot, Garrett Wareing, Joshua Odjick, Jordan Gonzalez, Roman Griffin Davis, Josh Hamilton, and Mark Hamill.
One Battle After Another (R) One of Paul Thomas Anderson’s more purely enjoyable movies stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former anti-ICE revolutionary who has to save his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) from a supersoldier (Sean Penn) who has reason to think the girl is his own biological daughter and kill her to destroy evidence of his sexual preference for Black women. The story is loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland and set in the present day, which brings out the antic, puckish side of Anderson’s filmmaking. The film has nerve-frying action sequences, including an inventive car chase in the California desert with the cars appearing and disappearing from view because of the hilly terrain. The film also gets great performances from the newcomer Infiniti, DiCaprio as a father who realizes he’s not doing so good as a parent because he’s drunk and stoned all the time, and Penn as a villain brimming with hatred for this girl he has never met. It’s not as tidy as I’d like, but it’s great anyway. Also with Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Alana Haim, Wood Harris, Shayna McHayle, Kevin Tighe, D.W. Moffett, and Tony Goldwyn.
Pets on a Train (PG) This English-dubbed version of a French animated film is about a group of animals who must save the passengers on a runaway train. Voices by Damien Ferrette, Hervé Jolly, Kaycie Chase, Frantz Confiac, Emmanuel Garijo, and Nicolas Marié.
Roofman (R) Derek Cianfrance’s charming but oh-so-slight caper film stars Channing Tatum as an escaped convict who spends more than a year hiding from a manhunt by living in a Toys ‘R’ Us store in Charlotte. The film has some good material about how the protagonist keeps tabs on the goings-on in the store and avoids detection by the customers and employees, and Tatum does some good work when his character falls in love with a downtrodden toy saleswoman and single mother (Kirsten Dunst). Still, the film is unwilling to explore the darker implications of its story and its main character, and the stacked supporting cast looks way overqualified for what they’re given to do. For good and bad, thiss movie feels like something that the filmmaker tossed off. Also with LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Ben Mendelsohn, Tony Revolori, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Molly Price, Emory Cohen, Lily Collias, Punkie Johnson, Jimmy O. Yang, and Peter Dinklage.
Soul on Fire (PG) Based on a real-life story, this Christian drama stars Joel Courtney as a young man who starts a business and a family despite suffering severe burns as a child. Also with John Corbett, Stephanie Szostak, Masey McLain, James McCracken, and William H. Macy.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 (R) It says something that the best sequence here is not when the heroine (Madelaine Petsch) is attacked by the Strangers, but rather by a warthog. After the events of the original movie, she is still being hunted by the Strangers, and the movie turns into a survival thriller as she hides in the wilderness from the killers. However, the set pieces that don’t involve the warthog are dull, and the main character goes from being really clever to being really stupid and back without any logic. When she kills the warthog, the movie passes up the chance to make her into a less fearful fighter on her own behalf, and the attempts at giving the killers backstory are little less than disastrous. Also with Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Richard Brake, Pedro Leandro, Ella Bruccoleri, and Lily Knight.
Telusu Kada (NR) This Telugu-language romantic comedy stars Siddhu Jonnalagadda, Raashii Khanna, Srinidhi Shetty, Harsha Chemudu, and Ravi Mariya.
Tron: Ares (PG-13) The best of the Tron movies, for what that’s worth. The third film stars Jared Leto as a computer-engineered super-soldier who’s sent by his tech CEO creator (Evan Peters) to kill a rival CEO (Greta Lee). Norwegian director Joachim Rønning manages to conjure up some genuinely cool-looking action sequences both in cyberspace and in the real world, and nostalgists for 1980s tech will love the scene when the soldier goes into the world from the original movie and meets Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). Unhappily, the movie misses its chances to either comment on the evolution of technology or make its human characters’ emotional longings feel real. The series continues to be an aesthetic rather than a story. Also with Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Hasan Minhaj, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, and Gillian Anderson.
Truth & Treason (PG-13) This Christian historical drama works reasonably well to start with before it falls apart. Ewan Horrocks stars as Helmuth Hübener, the real-life teenager who was a devoted Hitler supporter in Hamburg in 1941 before the arrest of his Jewish friend (Nye Occomore) made him realize that supporting the Nazis was incompatible with his Christian faith. The movie’s first half depicts Helmuth typing up anti-Hitler leaflets and distributing them by hand to mailboxes and parked cars in the city’s neighborhoods while an SS officer (Rupert Evans) tries to track them down, and it’s all fairly well done by director Matt Whitaker. Unfortunately, after Helmuth is caught, the suspense leaks out of the proceedings as the film becomes another tale of martyrdom. Also with Ferdinand McKay, Daf Thomas, Sean Mahon, Joanna Christie, Dominic Mafham, and Sylvie Varcoe.
Dallas Exclusives
The Astronaut (NR) Kate Mara stars in this science-fiction thriller as an astronaut who has possibly carried an alien organism back to Earth. Also with Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Luna, Ivana Milicevic, and Macy Gray.
Ballad of a Small Player (R) Based on Lawrence Osborne’s novel, this thriller stars Colin Farrell as a professional gambler struggling to survive in Macau. Also with Fala Chen, Alex Jennings, Deanie Ip, Anthony Wong, and Tilda Swinton.
